bearing blog

"On death as a blessing" --- and as a model.

"Dad?  Mom?  Does God love the people in Hell?"  

That's Milo, always with the theology questions at bedtime.  It would be easy to say "You're supposed to be in bed; go back upstairs."  

"Hmm.  We don't know for sure if there are any people in Hell.  But if there are people in Hell, then God must love them, since He loves every person."

"Then why are they still there?"  

There's nothing child-ish about children's theological thinking -- haven't the greatest minds among us been grappling with this stuff for two thousand years and more?   What good is this omnipotent omnibenevolence stuff anyway, if it can't or won't stop suffering, temporal or eternal?

"That's an answer nobody's sure about,"  I said.  "We know God's mercy lasts forever, but we also know that people might choose not to want His mercy.  Some people say that this must mean, either that any people in Hell must stay there because they really want to stay there, or else, because God knows that it is really the place where those people will be the most happy -- that because of their choices they would not really be happier anywhere else."

That was a couple of nights ago.  I thought of that conversation again this morning when I picked up the Office of Readings while I waited for the bread machine to make bagel dough for me.  The second reading was from "A treatise on death as a blessing by Saint Ambrose, bishop."  He writes about dying to self (this translation is from my dead-tree breviary, not the link):

Death must be active within us if life also is to be active within us... [The Apostle] therefore teaches us to seek out this kind of death even in this life, so that the death of Christ may shine forth in our lives---that blessed death by which our outward self is destroyed and our inmost self renewed, and our earthly dwelling crumbles away and a home in heaven opens before us.  

The person who cuts himself off from this fallen nature of ours and frees himself from his chains is imitating death...

The Lord allowed death to enter this world so that sin might come to an end.

I thought about that conversation with Milo, how some theologians suppose that Hell exists to provide a place of the most mercy possible for those who in the end don't want Heaven -- a concept that, though it's borne of logical argument from the premises that Hell and a merciful God both exist, probably seems odd to a child (why would you not want Heaven?  and also, can it really be so that Hell can be something merciful?)  Such an idea can only make sense given the terrible flaws in human nature, flaws that we can choose to cling to.

Physical suffering and death in this life often gets the same question, of course, and the good bishop Ambrose's comment got me thinking about the mechanism by which physical death could be a similar mercy in this life.   I've thought of it one way for a long time:  It's a sorrow because it's necessary even for the best of people only because of sin; it's a mercy because it does bring sin and sorrow to an end, at least in the here and now.  

But it had escaped me till now that, since our nature is so flawed as it is, we must learn to cast off those flaws and cut away that diseased part of the self.  To understand how to do this, maybe we needed something in nature to imitate, to understand -- something to which the analogy could be made.  So many of the truths of our faith have been taught to us through concrete imagery -- sowing and reaping, eating and washing, begetting and birthing.  The reality precedes the concrete:  "fatherhood" is what it is so that we could understand something about "God the Father," i.e., natural "fatherhood" was modeled somehow after what we call the Fatherhood in the Blessed Trinity.  

So perhaps natural death was created as a model for us to follow, itself after the process of cutting away the sinful part of ourselves, what we are told we must do with the help of Christ.  Perhaps death is what it is because of mercy, because it shows us something like what we have to go through during our physical lives, in order to come out the other side more alive than before.

Biteback.

Mary Jane refused to go into the child care at the YMCA this morning because the Halloween decorations were too scary for her.

Self-care.

I have a rotten cold.

These days, I hate being sick.   I never minded it all that much before I became a mother.  If I'm sick, I ought to be entitled to crawl into bed and stay there, uninterrupted except perhaps by the appearance of  cups of hot lemon tea at intervals.  Also someone should bring me chicken soup.  And yet here I am, coughing and sneezing and still having to take care of other people.  What is up with that? 

Oh, and:  Did I mention that my experience with, say, coughing/sneezing/vomiting, and other diaphragmatic spasming type issues has been seriously soured ever since I gave birth the first time?

(Cue the automatic Kegels practice)

Still, chin up!  I can, generally cope pretty well with a rotten head cold, even if I don't like it.

What I don't cope well with is rotten cold PLUS six months pregnant.  I do not know how to sum up the experience except with a single word:  "OOOOOOOOF."

Last night I persuaded Mark to let me crawl into bed as soon as dinner was over and stay there.   He took care of everything and I didn't have to make dinner or clean up dinner or read bedtime stories or nurse (no, Mark doesn't lactate, but he's good at toddler distraction) or break up fights or anything.  

I started to feel less generally-awful-all-over around four in the morning.  I still had the head cold, and am still 6 months pregnant, but those two conditions had decoupled and were no longer working together to destroy me.

At first I felt a little guilty at skipping my Thursday gym night, but now that I'm awake and coping a lot better, I am struck with awe at the power of simply getting some rest.  I haven't always noticed it; I guess it's not as important when you're younger, sick or not, pregnant or not.  Although to take to your bed for a few hours is not a quick and easy remedy  -- it requires someone to take care of your responsibilities for a while, and you can't get anything done that whole time, which I suppose is the point --  the results seem darn near miraculous.  How is it that simply lying still and closing your eyes can make such a big difference?  

I don't think I will get to repeat the experience tonight, but I did announce that I wasn't going to make dinner.  Mark can pick up a pizza or something.   It's a small thing, but it does mean just a little bit of pressure off my late afternoon, and maybe the chance to sit down and put my feet up at 4:30, or put on a DVD for the kids and go take a hot shower.  I don't play that card very often, and it means I can deploy it when it really counts.

It's the hair.

Yesterday evening at the grocery store I finally caught a clue about something that's been bugging me.

With this pregnancy, as with the previous three, complete strangers have been coming up to me and asking "what I'm having--"  you know, what's the baby's gender.  One thing that's different this time is that I know the answer; I had an ultrasound a few weeks ago, my first one.  

But another difference has been the frequency -- I hardly ever appear in public without someone coming up to me and saying, "I just have to ask you -- do you know what you're having?"  And I'll say yes, a boy, and they'll shake their head and smile.   Why so much?  Have people gotten more forward in the past three years?    I don't get it.

And then yesterday a woman who asked me the question supplied the missing piece:  after I said "A boy," she said sympathetically, "Wow, four boys!"

And I realized that all these people have been looking at Mary Jane and assuming she was a boy too.  Therefore it is necessary that I be interrogated to determine if I will be saddled with the fourth boy.  This explains the questioning, and also the sympathy.

*I* don't think she looks like a boy.  She was wearing a red and white striped dress yesterday, for pete's sake.  But... I guess I can see where someone might think "boy" looking at her.

From left to right:  XY, XY, XX.

Keep your hands off my family's Sudafed.

From Reason.com (h/t Radley Balko's excellent The Agitator), the latest update on the policy issue that was recently voted "Policy Issue Most Likely To Turn Bearing Blog Into A Flaming Libertarian Site Devoted to Deregulation:"

 The Wall Street Journal reports that "a nationwide resurgence in illegal methamphetamine labs" has caused state and federal legislators to re-examine the effectiveness of the Sudafed crackdown. They plan to do what prohibitionists always do in the face of failure: double down—in this case by requiring prescriptions for a cheap, safe, effective decongestant that not long ago was readily available in convenience stores across the land. That requirement will force doctors to police Americans' pseudoephedrine consumption...

Yes, you heard it:  the feds (and some states; Oregon's already done it) want to turn Sudafed into a prescription-only drug, not because of safety concerns, but because making it difficult for us to get it has not worked to stop methamphetamine production, and even less to stop methamphetamine use.

Leaving aside the ridiculously bad timing of such an endeavor (we already spend HOW MUCH on health care?  And you want to turn an effective self-treatment option, a well-beloved one measured in the dollars spent on pseudoephedrine every year, into one that requires a doctor's visit?  Perhaps an emergency room visit, for the uninsured?)....

...aw, what the hell, I've ranted about this before, here's my post from 2007 about the stupid guidelines on children's "cold medications" that don't distinguish among the several different compounds commonly sold as "cold medications."

And can I just add to the comments on the Reason website...

"have you ever tried to breastfeed a baby who has a terrible head cold and can't breathe through her nose? It's awful. Bleeding awful, both for you and the baby. An effective decongestant can mean the difference between a sick baby who can't easily take in her only source of fluid and nutrition, and a baby who can do it easily. Believe me, saline spray does NOT do the trick.

(disclaimer: nursing mothers should be cautious taking decongestants because of anecdotal evidence that in some women it compromises milk supply)"

Weekend improvement.

(I guess if I'm going to post, I need to settle for shorter posts.)

Some time ago, Mary Jane informed us:  "If the new baby is a brother, we will throw him in the trash can, and Daddy will have to take care of him."  

Now I have been through this sort of thing before.  Oscar used to say when I was expecting Milo:   "We will put the new baby in the pot, and stir, and burn the baby!"  So I am not, shall we say, worried about it.  

But after we learned that the new baby is indeed male, or at least looks that way on the ultrasound, I did do a little bit of coaxing about baby boys, and yet MJ remained unmoved.  Nope.  Baby boy = in the trash, Daddy = primary caregiver.  

However, a week ago MJ and I flew out West to visit friend and commenter Christy P, who happens to have a daughter "Z" the same age as MJ -- and a new baby son, whom I assume I can call, James-Bond like, "Q." (The last time I went out to visit her, we were both pregnant with the girls.)  

It was an interesting weekend.  We learned, for example, that not only can you fit 3 kids in the back of a Prius (that's one rear-facing carseat, one front-facing carseat, and one booster), you can in fact fit --- in the back of that same Prius---3 kids PLUS one nearly-6-months-pregnant 35-year-old, crouching in the backseat behind the passenger seat clutching her screaming daughter's legs to keep her from kicking the baby, and calmly (under the circumstances) requesting that the driver drive, um, carefully.  

(An impressive amount of legroom, the Prius has.  I'm just saying.)

Also that the best thing to do with two three-year-olds sentenced to spend lots of time together over the course of three days is to take them outside.  Park, zoo, whatever:  It's all good.  Mr. Rogers also made a welcome appearance.

But since I have gotten back I have also discovered something else very pleasant.  I think MJ was very taken with little Q, who is 3 months old and placid and wide-eyed and chubby, and also with Z's big-sisterly attitude toward Q.   She has been describing our trip as "I went on an airplane to visit Z and Q."   And since we have been back, she has been telling people rather proudly, "My baby is going to be a brother too." 

She has for a long time referred to Oscar and Milo as "her boys:"  -- "I'm going to go up to bed with my boys now and read stories."  "I'm going downstairs to watch a movie with my boys."  Maybe #4 will become one of her boys now, or maybe -- being younger -- he will occupy a wholly new spot in the family ecosystem.  Either way, I think she has come to some kind of acceptance.  Nice to see. 

Shaken baby syndrome: bogus?

Brief but interesting article, with links, by Radley Balko on the changing medical consensus (and the lag in the legal consensus) about "shaken baby syndrome," or SBS.  Some of the points raised:

• Symptoms that prosecutors have argued are proof of SBS are now known to occur because of other causes, including falls, infections, and reactions to vaccinations.
• Doctors used to think that classic SBS symptoms presented immediately after shaking, so that the person who was with the child when it died was certain to be guilty of manslaughter or even murder.  New research shows that the symptoms may take 3 days to set in.
• New research also shows that shaking without an accompanying head injury produces less serious bleeding than was previously believed.
• "I shook the baby to try to wake him up" has been taken as evidence of guilt.

I'm interested in the lag between scientific findings and their acceptance in other circles -- legal circles being one or the most important.  Balko notes:

In other words, there are almost certainly a significant number of innocent people in prison today who were wrongly convicted of shaking a baby to death. The problem is that there are also likely a number of guilty people who, nevertheless, shouldn't have been convicted on the basis of science-based testimony we now know to be false. The task will be convincing both the courts and the public to risk freeing actual child killers in order to free the innocent people convicted with flawed medical testimony...

This whole controversy speaks to a fundamental tension between science and law. Science moves along a slow trajectory from inquiry toward certainty. While the courts have been eager to embrace new science—particularly forensic science—at the trial level, they're reluctant to revisit those cases when the science changes.

Very interesting, especially for every parent who's ever worried that taking the baby to the emergency room after a fall might get him accused of child abuse...

Storytelling.

"Once Daddy took me to Nashville," said Mary Jane to me earnestly, "and you didn't go."  This began a long, detailed account of the day Daddy took her to Nashville, the sights they saw, the fun they had, and how sorry she was that I missed all of it.

The story was a work of fiction, and very interesting to listen to.  Milo was upset.  "Mom!" he hissed.  "She's lying."

"She's telling a story," I corrected.  "Isn't it a good one?"

All three of my children have come through this period of storytelling, in which they recount long tales, some more plausible than others, about something that purportedly happened to them.  And I remember other children telling these stories too --- my younger brother, I remember, was prone to tell stories about "when I was a grownup," for example.

  It's really interesting to hear what they come up with.  I wonder why?  I don't think they are lying exactly.  Nor do I think that they don't understand the difference between a true story and a made-up one --- they have all gone through this at an age around three years old, when they are wont to accuse a sibling of lying about something, and accurately too.  I do think that they have trouble expressing the difference between a true story and a made-up story.

And I think back to the way we model storytelling.  We read them stories:  Frances and Little Bear and Peter Rabbit. Fanciful ones, and realistic ones.  And we tell them stories, stories about ourselves, stories that they have no way of verifying.  And we use the same word for it:  we read a bedtime story, and we say "Let me tell you a story about when I was a little girl."   How do they know what we're doing when we tell a story of what happened to us when we were children?  How could they tell that we are not making the stories up simply to entertain them?

I think when they launch into these tales they are not lying, they are not seeking attention, they are trying to participate in "storytelling" -- as best as they can puzzle that out from the styles and genres of "stories" that grownups and older children tell them and tell each other.  They may not be sure what storytelling is, but they clearly know a good story when they hear one, and by now have some idea about what elements in a story will interest other people, and they stud their own stories with details to create them.  We don't verify our stories to them, so why should they feel a need to stress truth or falsehood?  We don't make much of a distinction between a true story and a made-up story, so why should they? 

Six.

Hannah suggested that 3yo Mary Jane draw a garden of flowers.  She said she couldn't.  "Then draw just one flower," suggested Hannah.  

"I can't," insisted Mary Jane.

"Well, what can you draw?"

"I can draw myself," she told Hannah.

"Then draw yourself," Hannah told her.  But she said:  

"No!  I will draw my WHOLE FAMILY."

From right to left, she reports:  "The new baby in Mommy's body... Daddy... Sister (me)... Mommy... brothers."

Your eight lifetimes.

Speculation as to why an hour is so long for a child, and so short for a grownup.

Let’s suppose that every time your age doubles, you live one “lifetime” which feels just as long as all the previous ones.  This would mean, for example, that the years between ages 10 and 20 feel just as long as the years between ages 20 and 40.  It makes sense to me — a 20-yeard-old probably feels as different from his 10-year-old self as a 40-year-old does looking back to age 20.  

...And in the end it makes me wonder about parenting.  A lot of people talk as if the goal of parenting is to produce a healthy and productive adult.  Surely this is important: adulthood sure seems long and important.  But I can’t help but wonder whether it’s more important to give your offspring a happy childhood than to prepare them for a happy adulthood.  After all, by age 18 you’ve already lived about five and a half of your eight lifetimes!

Logarithms and the meaning of life... I like it.  From Gravity and Levity, a blog I'd never heard of till VC linked to it today.